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The Jackening
Posted on Sunday, February 22 2009 @ 11:34:04 Eastern

Two games I've been looking forward to in the recent past are Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4. I'd been anticipating jumping into the fun, familiar mechanics and characters, either throwing shoryukens or shooting not-zombies in the face and then punching them, because fists hurt more than bullets for some reason.

But when I loaded up the RE5 demo good old suplex-happy, knife-fighting Leon wasn't there. Instead we get Chris and he's jacked. Like, super-jacked. I guess it's just supposed to make him seem tough, but he's got some serious biceps busting out of that tactical t-shirt thing and they're veiny. Makes me feel inadequate. Whatever, still a fun game. Moving on.

Street Figher 4 is what really put this whole thing over the edge for me. I'm pretty sure Ryu started out in SF2 at 5'10" and 150lbs. Did he fall into a bench press addiction in downtime between Street Figher editions? Did they need to fill him out to look better on the wider aspect-ratio? Am I just freaking out because this is the first time I've seen his manboobs in 3D? Ryu's got a big chest, big arms, silly abs. Looks like he wouldn't be able to straighten his elbows out to throw a hadouken.

And there are a bunch of other, silllier games with super jacked up main characters: Gears of War, Unreal Tournament , Army of Two. Characters that are all pretty much huge hyper-aggressive fist-pounding chads. Not that the Street Fighter gang was super realistic to begin with, but they also never made me want to drink a protein shake. Chris and the resident-evil protagonists always seemed more llike real people, though. Really, I think the jacking-up of Chris Redfield is an example of the move away from survival horror everyone is crying about-- you can't really be scared if you're the incredible hulk. I don't mind action-y gameplay, but I am getting tired of uber-muscled video game characters. They have their place, but I think it's usually unnecessary and it makes Street Fighter 4 less pretty than it could have been. At least now it's more believable that a Chris Redfield punch actually hurts more than a bullet to the forehead.

Comments

wildmario
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Feb 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Yeah I noticed this too. I think it's to shift more and more appeal to the guys who like their heroes to be so big and burly, basically Mr. Macho. We still have that stereotype in our media.

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radaclysm
Joined: Aug 2008

Posted: Feb 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
i think its fun to play as some absurdly built, neckless gorilla. the problem is these games need to jack up their characters even more. right now its all in the uncomfortably overcompensating part of the spectrum. you know what the problem is?! NO BEARDS. or chest hair. what the hell happened to dudes like duke nukem? theres no sense of humor any more

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JCvgluvr
Joined: Feb 2009

Posted: Feb 24th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
In videogames, men will always have 200 pounds of muscle mass, women will always have tight rumps and double D breasts, and they will both always be able to unleash hell with guns.

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Master_Craig
Joined: Jul 2006

Posted: Feb 24th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Chris Redfield's transformation was very surprising to me. Leon S. Kennedy looked like a really fit/athletic guy in Resident Evil 4 but it looked realistic and seemed appropriate. When my brother and I saw Chris' new look, we couldn't stop making jokes about his biceps in an Arnold Schwarznegger tone of voice. As JCygluvr said, the stereotype in video games and general fiction is that male characters are huge and brave, while female characters have big proportions and usually wear as little clothing as possible. I don't know why that is but maybe developers just think the players of these games would appreciate the characters to look like this or something?

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Sodbuster
Joined: Jan 2006

Posted: Feb 25th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I'd rather play as a big tough guy than a whiny little girlie man like the protagonists of all the Final Fantasy games released from FFIX on (except for X2). I would like to see more normal looking people, but we always seem to get the far ends of the spectrum. The scantily clad DD cups I've just gotten used to, and it's always been more of a joke to me than anything. Oh well, I mostly play RTS anyways.

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LinksOcarina
Joined: Nov 2005

Posted: Feb 25th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Um.sex appeal ftw?

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napsterxxl
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Feb 25th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Does the term "eye candy" mean anything?

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letusprey
Joined: Jan 2009

Posted: Feb 26th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Maybe it is a way to make us feel bad for being fat lazy gamers :)

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Sammo
Joined: Oct 2005

Posted: Feb 26th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Sweet. We do need some realistic beard-physics. Stay tuned next time for our second entry in this series: "The Boobening."

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wildmario
Joined: Jan 2007

Posted: Feb 27th, 2009 at 5:54 am
the boobening? lawl and i thought that was taken care of already.

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Clum-Z-Boy
Joined: Aug 2006

Posted: Mar 1st, 2009 at 7:54 am
Sodbuster's right though. I'd rather have that end of the spectrum. However, when it comes to Gears, the protagonists' muscle mass is a common misconception. Besides Marcus' neck, he really isn't that huge, it's mostly the bulbous chest armor that gives off the illusion. If you look at his arms, you'll notice they don't even come close to Chris Redfield's. So next time you're wondering if it would be better to be a Gear or fighting zombies, remember this: zombies get you an unbelievable physique and a fantastically endowed female sidekick, while being a Gear gives you big armor and a bunch of dudes.

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